For the Lost
by hippiechick2112
Summary: Death saw that Daniel Pierce always held onto the lost as his anchor. It was therapy in its own way. He understood the depths of despair and could only forget his own pain by helping others. Story twenty-six in the series "After My War".


**For the Lost**

 **Note and Disclaimer: _M*A*S*H_ is still not mine. Only my very overactive imagination is. Enjoy!**

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In order to be found, you have to be lost. In order to be lost, you would have had to have been pushed through some turbulent seas indeed, either by your own design or what life handed you. For Daniel Pierce, he had been through the toughest times. That was why he always strove to hold onto the lost.

It had been his lifelong anchor. As a child, Daniel was lost himself. Both of his parents were dead by the time he was fifteen. Various family members cared for him until he went to medical school and it left him bereaved and worn down. But it was the sheer _feeling_ of being adrift someplace where people did not understand that allowed Daniel to better understand those who did not have a steady life. It took him some years to get to shore. Once he did, he finished medical school, married and had children.

Daniel was born and raised in Crabapple Cove, Maine. That was where he decided he wanted to settle and where he wanted to raise his two children. He and his wife bought a home near the ocean and lived the perfect existence every family should…until an epidemic swept through Crabapple Cove. That was what ended one phase of his life and began another.

At the time this happened, it was the Great Depression. Even though times were tough and lean and not everybody had access to healthcare, food and shelter, Daniel helped out where he could. However, he could not save his wife and one of his children. It left him helpless and once more in the middle of an ocean without rescue. The only thing that kept him going was his son, who survived – Hawkeye.

All they had was each other and that was enough. Even though Daniel thought about remarrying, he could not get the approval of his son. Nobody could replace his wife. In the end, he was very much alone. Instead, he reached out to his community to chase it away, hoping to fill in the hole created by the deaths of his daughter and wife. While it put a band aid over it, he still could not shake away the feeling that he was still lost.

But that was the best part of it. When you're lost, you reach out to people who feel the same way. That way, you can forget about what you feel and focus on others instead. That was the biggest anchor Daniel had. He put aside his grief. It was difficult to raise his son alone. But he also saw that he was not the only one who was lost. While Hawkeye used the ocean as his calming mechanism, he was just as lost his Daniel.

As Hawkeye grew, so did Daniel. To keep himself from being lost, he extended his hand to more and more people. He opened his home to the hurt and sick and healed them there instead of a clinic or hospital or brought them there himself. He traveled to homes if they could not come to him. He tried to bring more peace to an otherwise isolated community. He even supported his son when he went to Boston as a medical student. Of course, Hawkeye came home to help his father, but that was another story.

The biggest test he experienced was Korea. When Hawkeye was drafted, Daniel swam not just in misery, but of misplacement. For the first time, his son will be out of the country, thousands and thousands of miles away, and there was a chance that Hawkeye will be killed. Daniel could not believe that he will not be able to guide his son through the perils of life. He was helpless.

Luckily, it was the community that gathered around Daniel. When Hawkeye left, all of those lost people came to him. They too had given up their husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers and mothers to this lost cause. And it was through this sort of togetherness – from one lost person to another – that brought Daniel out of this miserable stupor. It was with this that he once more held onto the lost to get through those years of hell.

Daniel did not know when Hawkeye was going to be discharged. He relished every letter he read and replayed every phone call. Even when the possibility that Hawkeye was dead blanketed him, Daniel did not back down. He held onto his chain of lost people to pull him through. To be lost together meant that they did not remain the darkness for long. It meant that there was a light somewhere. All they had to do was find it.

After his war, Daniel received Hawkeye with open arms. It was going to be a long healing process for both of them. Both had been at war and had been battered by it. It was tough getting past it though. It took a community and many more years before the two seemed right again. Even then, Hawkeye and Daniel held onto each other, tighter than before.

But he was old and tired. Three years of worrying had worn Daniel down. Retirement was an option, but he dismissed it. He still had more to guide. For the lost, there will never be any rest until they were six feet under.

I am Death though…and there is always a way to me. Daniel Pierce escaped me through a bond of love that he built in his own despair. While many people sought suicide, he chose to hold onto the lost to keep afloat. He gained much more that way. No man could have been stronger than he was. The depths of his love knew no bounds.


End file.
